Metacritic reviews

It is a straightforward narrative of racism where one man’s courage and refusal to give up provides an outlet for success and reform.

I’m Charlie Walker has just enough “feel good” and “that’ll show them” elements to get by. But I dare say a better film was hacked out of it, at some point. The evidence of that easy enough to see.

It’s Charlie’s wife, Ann (Safiya Fredericks), who provides the movie’s voice-over. Her account has a mythmaking undercurrent but is also the film’s deft way of celebrating Black love and family.

The movie is so enamored of Walker, and Colter radiates so much charisma and pleasant mischief in the role, that it takes about half the running time to realize that the movie is not delivering on the basics.

It’s so talky and un-visual that despite it taking place in multiple locations, including the California coastline, it feels like a play barely opened up for the cameras.

Not since Morgan Freeman’s Joe Clark in “Lean on Me” has a real-life person’s ass been kissed more by a movie. At least that movie had superior lips.

It is a bewildering misfire which roundly illustrates the differences between a historically under-told story which arguably should be amplified and a movie that actually does a good job of accomplishing that task.

The only real saving grace is the cast, who end up guinea pigs in a test of how difficult it is to overcome underbaked material.